A friend (34M) invited me (30F) out to a large birthday party because there was a live band there. It was mostly older people in attendance (40-50’s range) no one I knew, but I had nothing going on and wanted to see some live music.

My friend and I went into a side room to have a conversation. I had only had one beer, everyone else seemed pretty inebriated. There were other people in this room, but it was much quieter. A drunk man (probably late 40’s) walks up behind me and slaps both sides of my lower back and yells, “I know you!” in my ear (I had never met this man before in my life). Even if he did know me, the way he touched me would be uncomfortable. The vibes were slimy, off, and creepy just from that short interaction.

My friend immediately gets up and freaks out, telling him where he gets off putting hands on a woman, to back the fuck up, mind his space, etc. The man says he knows me, to chill out, it’s fine. My friend says, “so what’s her name, then?” The man, dumbfounded goes, “ask her!” This man’s friends come to defend him, telling my friend to calm down, that it’s fine, he never touched me.

I say, “yes, he touched me, and it made me uncomfortable.” A man looks me dead in the eyes and says, “it’s not like he twisted your boobies or something,” while making the hand motions along with it.

Another woman said, “well, it’s his birthday. So you can’t talk to him like that.” My friend then went up to someone else, who I think owned the property, and began yelling about the incident, refusing to keep it quiet. The woman who made the birthday comment was already there, saying he never touched me, she was there.

My friend’s girlfriend even said, “it just sounds like he thought he knew her.”

I wasn’t saying it was assault, but when I said it made me uncomfortable I was treated like I was accusing him of something and over reacting. The fact every single man and woman in that room besides my friend automatically just was like, “this is my friend, so it’s okay for him to act like this.” I am never setting foot around these people again.

Though my friend was drunk and was a bit more aggressive about it than I was comfortable with at the time, I’m so glad that he stood up for me. I’m just so disappointed in what happened.

Edit: Clarity

Second edit: I think it’s the people’s reactions that are actually getting to more than the actual touching. The fact that people create safe spaces for creeps and harmful spaces for women, and some of those people are women themselves breaks my heart. What happened tonight wasn’t particularly traumatizing on the scale of the things that I’ve dealt with, but the reaction and enabling was terrifying to see in real time and in such an overt way.